


bury my heart on the coals

by TheAndromedaRecord



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Jewish Character, Jewish Martin Blackwood, M/M, Slow Burn, Yearning, martin died pre-canon and he's a ghost now, martin hates jon at first, martin was one of gertrude's assistants, martin's a real bastard in this one, the major character death happens before the fic because martin has to die to be a ghost
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:47:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22668784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAndromedaRecord/pseuds/TheAndromedaRecord
Summary: Martinhatesthe new Archivist. Not that he's going to do anything about it. After all, Martin Blackwood is dead.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 158
Kudos: 369





	1. Chapter 1

Martin Blackwood _hates_ the new Archivist. 

He hates Jon’s stupid overstyled hair and his pretentious eyeglass chain—he’ll _never_ be Gertrude—and his dumb sweater vest that’s always tucked into his slacks. He hates how Jon talks to the new assistants—he’s reprimanded them for violating dress code twice already, and he carries himself with a clear air of superiority, even though Martin’s been listening and he knows the man doesn’t even have a library science degree. Not that Martin does, either, but at least he didn’t pretend to know more than everyone else. Gertrude had a bit of that air, but she actually did know more than everyone else. Jonathan Sims wouldn’t know an Avatar if it hit him upside the head. Which one of them probably will at some point.

Martin hates hearing Jon read statements. His voice is calming, yes, and he’s unfortunately already slotting well into the role of the Archivist. But he always ends each real statement with some bored-sounding twaddle about drugs or “unverifiability,” and it makes Martin’s blood boil. At the very least, he does seem to believe in the danger of Leitners. He even goes so far as to comment on the fire in Artefact Storage that sent most of the Institute’s Leitners up in flames. Martin smirks a little at that. 

Jon is a twat, but luckily he doesn’t actually have to disrupt any rituals. No one does. 

Martin’s old desk has been taken over by a man named Tim, while a woman named Sasha occupies the space that once belonged to Micheal. The desks were totally cleaned out, of course. Martin cleared out Micheal’s desk himself, crying the whole time, and Elias has purged any remnants of Martin from the Archives. Presumably to give to his mother. Martin has no doubt that the package was sent back unopened. 

He allows himself a grim chuckle at the thought of Elias and his mother both pretending to be sorry about the disappearance of someone they both hated. 

Tim and Sasha are good archival assistants. A pity what they’re doing does no good. Martin wishes he could have warned them, but he can’t really talk to anyone. Not that he’s tried. And Tim and Sasha were part of the Institute anyway. It wouldn’t have helped. 

Once, Tim brought a packet of crisps into the Archives, and Jon emerged from his office like a scent hound to demand that all food be banished from the Archives. “My Archives,” he’d called them.

Tim stuck his tongue out at Jon’s back, and Martin was inclined to agree. Gertrude had let them bring as many snacks as they wanted. Once, him and Michael had brought a full portable camping stove to work and nearly set the place on fire making pizza rolls. 

Now Martin is a ghost, and Micheal...well. Martin doesn’t know which of them has it worse.

He can knock papers over sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly strong. Some days, he’s fully corporeal, just another employee that no one looks at. On those days, he makes himself tea and watches the people whose gazes slide right over him. He used to make tea for Gertrude. He doesn’t make any tea for Jon.

There’s probably plenty Martin could do if he had a goal to work towards. Stopping the rituals is a pointless game. He doesn’t have anyone left in the living world. Elias—no, Jonah—is planning something nefarious, but what can Martin do about that? He’s just a ghost, trapped between entities. He’s been up to Jonah’s office a few times, but the man apparently can’t see Martin, and Martin’s reluctant to draw attention to himself without a solid plan.

Jonah knows the rituals can’t work. Maybe all he wants is to continue the status quo. Collecting statements and the fear of others. Martin is okay with that. He’s never been a vengeful man—killing Jonah won’t bring Gertrude or him back, and it would hurt plenty of people in the Institute. Jonah iss evil, yes, but there are far more evil things and people. 

So Martin just walks. He can leave the Institute, but stepping out into London proper always leaves him with a terrifying tightness in his chest and a fog creeping behind his eyes. The Archives is all he has left to hold onto, to hold the Lonely at bay.

He starts watching the assistants. About a week after the new staff move in, he’s got the two of them figured out pretty well. Sasha is smart and diligent. She’s skilled with computers and cheery in a confident way, not like the happy mask Martin always put up to ward off rejection. Tim is brash yet professional, and Jon seems to like him, which makes Martin dislike Tim just a little. He likes Tim a bit more after hearing some of his jokes. Tim is handsome in a way that makes him a surprising sight in an archive. He seems like the kind of man Martin would have gone for back when he first moved to London and was experimenting with his sexuality. 

He doesn’t spend much time trying to figure out Jon. Jon is...Jon. He’s prickly and unpleasant, and there don’t seem to be any deeper layers. Jon is decidedly not the kind of guy Martin would go for under any circumstances.

Elias—Jonah—the Institute head comes down to the Archives exactly a week after Jon’s promotion. 

“Hey, boss,” Tim greets him. “Jon’s recording a statement, you might wanna wait for a bit.”

Martin watches nervously from the corner. Sasha pauses in her valiant effort to organize the 1940s box, undoing all of Gertrude’s filing system, namely “fuck the filing and fuck the eye.”

“Oh, that’s fine,” Elias—yes, it’s easier to think of him as Elias—says dismissively in that oily voice that makes Martin feel sick, with that oily face that makes Martin feel sick. It was the last face he saw before he died. “I just thought I’d pop in and see how you all are settling in.”

“Gertrude really didn’t keep this place organized,” Sasha remarks.

“Yes, that’s unfortunate,” Elias sighs. “It is a rather extensive archives, but I confess that only one of her three assistants was actually competent. You two are shaping up a lot better than Blackwood and Shelley, I must say.”

Martin feels a blow to his pride, and he hates himself for it. He shouldn’t care what Elias thinks, especially because he was under orders to not try to organize the Archives. Still, he can’t help that defensive little twinge in his heart, the desire to prove himself, to do better.

“Anyway,” Elias continues, “I must head back to my office. Keep up the good work.”

Martin walks over and knocks over one of the stacks Sasha was organizing. 

“Damn draft,” she swears as she scrabbles to recover the papers. Tim rushes to her aid.

“Only one actually competent,” Martin mutters. “And he was the one who had to gouge his eyes out to quit.”

He slaps Tim’s pencil holder off his desk. Tim yelps in surprise as the pencils clatter across the floor.

“I remember he had a different tune after the Flesh ritual. All ‘you two really did outshine my expectations’ like he didn’t know the whole thing was pointless. God. I really hope he chokes on his own dessicated—”

The door to Jon’s office bursts open, and the hinges seem irritated, because Jon always seems irritated, like he’s in a perpetual state of “I have better things to do.”

“Done with your statement?” Sasha asks.

“This one was completely ridiculous,” Jon snorts. “Something about a singing coffin.” He tucks the tape and statement into a relevant box. “I really don’t know why we bother to follow up all of these.”

“Because it’s the Buried, Jon,” Martin tells him, “and you’re serving an evil entity that wants you to know.”

Jon doesn’t hear him, of course. 

“Jon!” Tim gasps in mock shock. “Are you really suggesting we do any less than our due diligence?”

“I know, I know,” Jon sighs. “I am not suggesting we actually abandon our follow up. Simply venting on the stupidity of some of the people who come to give statements here.”

Martin kind of wants to punch Jon in the face.

“These people have been traumatized,” he snaps. “They’ve faced down something you can’t even imagine and lived. One of those things, you actually serve! And you don’t even have the decency to believe them even when their statements don’t record digitally. You are a callous man and your tie is stupid. I hope you come across an avatar before your assistants do so they don’t have to put up with you dismissing their experience.”

Martin knows it isn’t fair. He knows that most people go their whole lives without a compelling reason to believe in the supernatural, and some who do encounter the entities turn to denial as a coping mechanism. He knows that, from the outside, any normal person would agree with Jon. But Martin knows better. Martin’s friend was consumed by the Spiral, another was terrorized by a Leitner, and Gertrude was killed by a psychotic body-hopping Eye bureaucrat. Martin has a few pockmarks near his elbow from an encounter with one of Amherst’s acolytes, he nearly lost a leg to the Hunt, and he had burns on several parts of his body long before he died in an eruption of flame. This is the Magnus Institute, and Jon should know better, and Martin has nothing but contempt from those who close their eyes and clamp hands over their ears and chant that there’s nothing unknown in the world. 

“What was that, Tim?” Jon asks.

Tim shrugs. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Are you sure?” Sasha says. “Because I definitely heard something.”

Martin freezes. They heard him. Not distinct enough for him to communicate, but they heard him.

Good to know.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin mourns alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! i'm not jewish but this chapter deals with the practice of jewish mourning traditions. please feel free to let me know if i mistreated or misrepresented anything!

Martin Blackwood sits on Jon’s desk and listens to him read a statement about Ex Altiora. He feels the ozone crackle in the air. He can’t tell if it’s Jon’s voice or a memory. Still, what Jon’s reading is pretty familiar Vast business. Martin hasn’t had too many dealings with the Vast.

“The auction was titled “Key of Solomon 1863 owned by MacGregor Mathers and Jurgen Leitner” and had been won for just over £1200 by a deactivated user – grbookworm1818.”

Martin gives a dry chuckle. Gertrude never told him about that. There was a lot that Gertrude never told him. 

Jon says the words “Pinhole Books” in a dry, uncaring voice, and Martin’s breath hitches in his throat. The words “Mary Keay” certainly don’t help his breath return.

“She said it had been a long time since she’d found a Leitner, although her Gerard” kept an eye out. She gave no elaboration as to who her Gerard might have been.”

Martin gives an involuntary whine at that, and tears start to pool in his eyes.

“Gerry,” he whispers, and memories flood back.

* * *

“You Who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, Who abides in the shadow of the Omnipotent,

Martin murmured the words in English; he only had the English version of Psalm 91 open on his phone, and he’d never learned Hebrew or Aramaic beyond a few basics. 

“I say to you of the Lord Who is my refuge and my stronghold, my G‑d in Whom I trust,”

His words felt far too small for the hospital morgue, cramped as it was. They felt far too small for the man laying cold and dead before him. 

“that He will save you from the ensnaring trap, from the destructive pestilence.”

It was his first time as a shomer and probably his last; his mother would no doubt reject the tradition. He had fallen a bit lax in his practice, himself. Martin’s faith had never been a strong thing, certainly not strong enough to weather the knowledge of the Fears unmarred. 

“He will cover you with His pinions and you will find refuge under His wings; His truth is a shield and an armor.”

Gerry was not a man of faith, either, but somehow he had bolstered Martin’s belief rather than compromised it. Martin had offered him a secular burial as he sat by Gerry’s bed, clutching his hand, but Gerry had refused with a wan smile, saying that he trusted Martin to know best how to send him into the beyond. His only request was that he be cremated, to prevent just the thing Martin kept vigil to guard him from. 

Of course, the Shemira was the only part of the whole process that Martin could provide. Hunting monsters didn’t give much time for sitting Shiva, either. Funny. First time in his life that Martin had actually wanted to adhere to the traditions and he couldn’t afford the time or money. 

If the point was to return the body to G—d, surely scattering his ashes to the winds would work just as well. Martin winced at the imagined scoldings of his old synagogue’s Rabbi. He was doing everything wrong. Traditions were not safe in his hands.

“You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day,”

His father would have told Martin to disregard Gerry’s wishes regarding cremation, but Martin had no money for a coffin anyway. It was no harm, he decided. The cremation was preventing great harm after death, not causing it. 

“the pestilence that prowls in the darkness, nor the destruction that ravages at noon.”

The sores on Martin’s elbow twinged with remembered pain. He was glad Amherst was dead, but he would have suffered a thousand more infections to keep Dekker alive. Though Dekker was not Jewish, it was far easier to keep the faith with him around. 

“A thousand may fall at your left side, and ten thousand at your right, but it shall not reach you.”

Martin rather liked to think that these lines referred to the fears; to the Corruption, the Dark, the Desolation, and the Slaughter, and Gerry was beyond them all now, resting with someone far greater than the Entities could ever aspire to be. 

“You need only look with your eyes, and you will see the retribution of the wicked.”

And there was the eye. But not the Eye, no. Gerry would see a world where the things that had hurt him and others were brought low, even if it was a world he no longer lived in. Martin would make it so, he vowed, finding a new resolve within himself to stay with Gertrude despite everything. 

In the after, looking would be a good thing.

“Because you have said, ‘The Lord is my shelter,’ and you have made the Most High your haven,”

Martin didn’t know the exact rules about Gentiles and death, but he believed in a G—d who would welcome Gerry with open arms. _Tell Him Martin sent you,_ he thought. 

Gerry’s jacket was tight across his shoulders. It felt like the final embrace Gerry had been too weak to give.

“no evil will befall you, no plague will come near your tent—”

Martin cut off the Psalm and his breath hitched as the door to the morgue creaked open. Ordinarily, he’d just keep reading, but he knew who it was. 

“He’s not Jewish,” Gertrude said coldly. “I told you to go back to the hotel.”

“And I told you not to doom my friend to a lifetime of torment,” Martin snapped back. “I’m keeping Shemira until the home comes to pick him up for cremation. You can wait until that’s done.”

Martin stood from his chair and folded his arms, standing as a shield between Gerry and Gertrude. 

“You’re being insensible,” Gertrude told him. “You know this has to be done.”

Martin laughed, and it went on a little too long. His laugh was bouncing and tired and terrified. 

“He’s an asset,” Gertrude added.

“I. Don’t. Care.”

Gertrude unzipped her messenger bag and pulled out the book. Martin glared at it as if trying to set it on fire with his gaze alone. 

“You could speak to him again, you know,” Gertrude said. “Why would you refuse that?”

“Don’t,” Martin hissed, his voice quiet but sharp. “Put that thing back and turn around.”

“Martin, step aside.”

Martin always flinched from Gertrude’s steely-eyed stare, but not today. He met her supernatural eyes with his mundane ones, chin held high and taking full advantage of his height.

“No.”

Gertrude raised an eyebrow. Martin had never refused a direct order from her.

“If you try to do this,” Martin continued, “I’ll stop you. And then I’ll walk.”

“Walk?” Gertrude scoffed.

“Away from you. Away from the Institute. And then you get neither of us.” Martin spread his arms and bared his teeth. “I know my value, Gertrude. With the Unknowing approaching, you need someone touched by the Eye just in case. And I’ve got marks from a few other entities too. Not to mention I do whatever you say. You really think Gerry’s page would count as a proper sacrifice?”

Gertrude slid the book back into her bag. “Very well.”

Martin slumped back into his chair as her footsteps recede. He vowed not to leave Gerry’s side—Gertrude could be sneaky.

 _I will be your guardian,_ Martin vowed, _as you were always mine._

* * *

“She asked if I liked the painting and told me that her Gerard had done it.”

Martin realizes that he’s crying. Gerry drew him once. The drawing is no doubt among the things that Elias packed up to send to his mother. 

“Stood just over the threshold was a man in a long, dark leather coat. His hair was dyed an artificial black, and he had the unshaven look of someone who hadn’t slept in a couple of days. I asked him if he was Gerard Keay.”

Martin draws his knees up to his chest and hugs Gerry’s jacket around himself. He’s glad to have died in Gerry’s jacket and Micheal’s necklace.

“Stop,” Martin begs, but Jon doesn’t listen. He’s lost in the statement. To him, Gerry Keay is just another curio, a thread to tie the statements together. Martin hates Jonathan Sims for that.

“Our mother doesn’t always know what’s best for our family.”

Martin hiccups out a wet laugh. 

“That’ll be our Gerry,” he whispers. Brave Gerry, selfless Gerry, Gerry who was unafraid of fire. 

“Then Gerard Keay left, and I never saw him or the book again.”

Martin curls his arms around his head and moans in anguish. A small, horrible, hateful part of him wishes he’d let Gertrude bind Gerry. He would never see Gerry again. Their friendship had lasted barely a few years. Far too short. He misses Gerry like he misses being alive. He’s glad he can still cry; the burn of his tears keeps back the fog of the Lonely that threatens to curl around his throat and crush it.

Jon records his “notes” with boredom and none of the reverence that Gerry deserves. He calls him “Gerard.” Just like Mary did. 

Martin wonders what Gerry would have thought of Jon, and his chest squeezes tightly when he realizes anew that none of them will never know.

They would know, perhaps, if Gerry’s page was in the Archives. Martin knows he did the right thing. The right thing hurts sometimes. 

Martin keeps crying for a long, long time.

* * *

“Hey, boss?”

Jon looks up to see Tim in the doorway, looking a bit perturbed and holding a tape.

“What is it, Tim,” he sighs. Probably another useless correction Tim wants done. 

“Well.” Tim holds up the tape. “I was listening to statement 0132806 and...um. Maybe I should just show you.”

Jon sighs. “Tim, I do not have time for this.”

“I think you’ll want to hear this, Jon. It’s...well, I know you hate the word, but it’s seriously spooky.”

Jon huffs and slams the files he was reviewing down on the desk. “Fine.”

Tim slots the tape in and starts the replay. Nothing unusual about it. 

“Is this—”

Tim shushes him. “Wait.”

Jon is thus forced into the boring indignity of listening to his own voice. He listens intently so Tim won’t make him relisten, but there appear to be no abnormalities with the recording. 

“She said it had been a long time since she’d found a Leitner, although her Gerard” kept an eye out. She gave no elaboration as to who her Gerard might have been.”

Tim gestures excitedly, and Jon frowns, because there’s a spike of static and what sounds like another voice. Like an animal in pain.

The interference continues until it almost drowns out Jon’s voice, and it sounds exactly like someone crying. Jon knows he turns off the recording as soon as he’s finished, but the recording continues for about five minutes after he’s done talking. And it’s filled with the anguished sounds of a man quietly sobbing. 

Jon doesn’t know what to do with people crying at the best of times, and this is not the best of times. It doesn’t help that the man’s crying is the kind that Jon hates to hear. The muffled crying of a broken man. Jon wants to reach out and comfort whoever it is, which is an annoying urge to feel towards radio interference. Listening to the recording is deeply unnerving. He knows he was alone in his office. 

Finally, the man on tape composes himself, and the recording ends. Jon just sits there in stunned silence. 

“It’s probably interference,” he says, his voice choked and hushed. Of course it’s interference. What else could it be? It has to be interference, because if it wasn’t interference, someone—something—was in the room with Jon.

“Sasha says it’s not, and she knows all about interference.”

Jon runs a hand through his hair, messing up his meticulous styling.

“Make a note of it,” he mumbles. “And keep an eye out for this interference in the future.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yell at me on tumblr: @ceaselesslywatched

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on tumblr at ceaselesslywatched


End file.
